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Charles McNeair will walk free after more than 46 years in prison — due in part to Duke Law students and faculty who advocated on his behalf. 

McNeair was arrested at age 16 and later sentenced to life in prison for a rape he has always said he didn’t commit. Despite maintaining an impressive record while incarcerated, including learning to read and obtaining his GED, he was repeatedly denied parole until his last petition.

Upon learning of his approval for parole, McNeair, now 63, told Duke Law professor Jamie Lau, “I'm joyful, I'm happy, and I have all the feelings.”

“Returning to a community that looks nothing like the community he left 46 years ago is going to take time,” said Lau, who has been advocating for McNeair since 2022.  

“Supporting him through that transition is going to be really important to his success.”

Lau is also supervising attorney of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic. A case for innocence could not be litigated because the Lexington Police Department lost the original criminal investigative file, he said.

McNeair was arrested in November 1979, when he was 16, for an alleged rape in Lexington, North Carolina. A middle-school dropout who couldn’t read, he pled guilty to second degree rape on the advice of a court-appointed attorney who told him he might otherwise get the death sentence and was sentenced to life in prison. Under current North Carolina law, the maximum sentence for a Class C felony is 182 months.

In 2022, his case came to the attention of Duke Law student Claudia Benz JD ’23, a volunteer with a pro bono group formed by Lau as the Clemency Project (now the Duke Decarceration Project). Benz and Lau submitted a commutation petition on McNeair’s behalf to a review board created by then-governor Roy Cooper to review cases of individuals tried and sentenced in adult criminal court for acts committed prior to age 18, and who had served at least 20 years of their sentence and demonstrated rehabilitation. 

But Cooper didn’t act on the petition, and Lau took up McNeair’s parole case. Benz, now working as a public defender in Maryland, has also maintained a relationship with McNeair since graduation and was one of the first to learn he would be released on parole.

"I am so happy for Charles and that he finally has his freedom," Benz said.

McNeair has lost both his parents during his 46 years in prison. But he still has a number of surviving family members and a large number of supporters in the Lexington community. They include Police Chief Robby Rummage, who has urged current Gov. Josh Stein to grant clemency.

“All of that is a testament to who Charles is today, because for someone who is incarcerated to garner that type of support from that diverse a group of people is pretty remarkable,” Lau said.